This is the admin's (Hagbard) bid for an evaluation of the Championship Tournament 2024.
The tournament ran the same way as last year, with a few changes.
Same format as last year, described here (revised):
Diagonal Tournament Format.
Changes from last year.
Timing x5 was used, and with no move time protection.
Elimination by 5 lost games.
Race Games were run as two Round Robins and scored by the Formula One method (hat tip Tonythebook).
What worked well.
It improved the setup pairing of players to sort by maximal ratings instead of current ratings.
Again, to show the round setups beforehand to the players.
Games between nearly equal players are of very good quality.
To start new rounds as soon as possible. Yet avoiding to start many new rounds simultaneously.
The Race Games format worked well (Round Robin format + Formula One scores).
The x5 timing was better, with less risk of timeout while still encouraging reasonably fast play.
Timing x5 worked for California also.
The total-time-counter worked, so that the longest round was 26 days.
The finalists got extra 10 days because we ran into December and Christmas. This benefitted the final games.
Simulator runs show that elimination by 5 lost games gives a stable result, whereas 4 lost games can be too arbitrary.
The Copenhagen final duel happened to be between the previous world champion and the next to be world champion.
What worked badly.
It turned out to still be possible to abuse, that opponents are absent during night's sleep.
Two players stayed awake for two nights to respectively force and avoid a timeout.
The Round 2 setups with Oblique Lines format was a big mistake.
Fx. Copenhagen opponents had an enormous rating difference, with fx. player 04 playing against player 14 etc.
Despite of this hopeless challenge, players fought like berserks, and in several cases the weaker player managed to win.
This mistake also cost an extra round and at least 14 days extra,
and we missed out on many real games which could have been between more equal players. The right round 2 setup would've been the Whisk setup!
What could be improved next year.
Timing should be changed to better protect players' night sleep.
The Hist. and Sea lines should start a week later than the Cop. line. (Hat tip Casshern)
Race Games could start with a delay of two weeks.
The setups should not have too big rating differences between players.
The Whisk setup should be used for the first two or three rounds, as desribed here:
Diagonal Tournament Format.
Speaking for myself, some earlier years I concentrated on administration and didn't join the tournaments.
The last two years, however, I joined all lines, and it was great fun for me! Thank you to you all for taking part!
The winner was found after 116 days (last year 81 days), and the whole tournament was finished after 116 days (last year 81 days).
31 players participated with 763 games and 33860 moves.
Congratulations to World Tafl Federation Champion 2024, Mario Aluizo ("Casshern"), Los Angeles, USA!
Also congratulations to "Alex Hnefatafl", Samara, Russia, winner of Historical Hnefatafl and Sea Battle!
And congratulations to Plamen Draganov ("Draganov"), Sofia, Bulgaria, winner of Race Games!
Many thanks to the five umpires Jilles Tjoelker, Hamish Lawson, Adam Bartley, Steve Lonsdale and Mike Coveny!!
And to the 31 players who took part!
Again a big thank you to Mikkel Berg-Nordlie who created the game pieces for the Tablut, and to Luk Martens who created the game pieces for all the other variants!!
Elimination by 5 losses.
Simulator runs show that elimination by 5 losses gives reliable results, whereas elimination by 4 losses can be too arbitrary.
To that with threshold 5, top players cannot be eliminated in Round 1, and "bottom" players are in average also not eliminated in Round 1.
Timeouts.
31 players participated with 763 games.
There were 45 timeouts.
32 timeouts were caused by war.
5 timeouts were resign by leaving.
Left are 8 real timeouts = 1%. This is considered to be very low for an online tournement.
Whisk setup of Round 2.
Here is shown how the Round 2 should have been set up with the Whisk format.
o the Oblique Lines setup which was used.
x the Whisk setup as it should be.
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
00 x x o o
01 x x o o
02 x x o o
03 x x o o
04 x x o o
05 x x o o
06 x x o o
07 x x x o o
08 x x x o o
09 o x x x o
10 o o x x x
11 o o x x x
12 o o x x x
13 o o x x x x
14 o o x x x x
15 o o x x x x
16 o o x x x x
17 o o x x x x
18 o o x x x x
Copenhagen Round 3 possible setup.
After this, the Copenhagen Round 3 with Whisk setup could have been something like:
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
00 x x
01 x x
02 x x
03 x x x
04 x x x
05 x x x
06 x x x
07 x x x
08 x x x
09 x x x
10 x x x
11 x x x x
12 x x x x
And after this, probably so many players would've been eliminated so that next would be directly to the Final.